Dispensers for tissue rolls are well known in the art. There is shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 6,752,349 to Moody et al. a tissue dispenser for two rolls of coreless tissue. The dispenser includes a support sled for mounting the rolls. The support sled is provided with latch dog assemblies which are biased towards a release position such that a second roll will become available when a first coreless tissue roll is depleted. The dispenser of the '349 patent accommodates two rolls; in many cases more capacity is desired.
Other dispensers have been proposed for three or more rolls. There is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,310,129 to Whittington et al. a dispenser for sequentially dispensing rolls of tissue. The dispenser includes a support having a housing with an opening. A roll holder is rotatably mounted on the support and has three spaced roll support shafts or spindles which are inserted into rolls. The roll holder and rolls are maintained in an unbalanced condition to sequentially present the rolls at a dispensing position under the influence of gravity.
Another three roll dispenser is seen in U.S. Pat. No. 5,636,182 to Conner et al. The dispenser of the '812 patent is similar in most respects to that of the '129 patent mentioned above; however, the dispenser has a limiting gate position to impede rotation of a roll mounting turret when a roll is full.
One drawback of three roll gravity-feed dispensers is that in order to maintain an unbalanced condition favoring advancement in a dispensing direction, only two of three available mounting posts are filled with material. Otherwise, the load (apart from the roll being dispensed) is generally symmetrically distributed about a vertical bisecting the turret of the dispenser and the rolls thus have insufficient gravity bias to be reliably advanced. See the '812 patent at FIGS. 2-4 and note the disclosure at Col. 3, lines 21 and following. Additional dispensers are seen in the following: British Patent No. 2,245,882 to Crisp et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 6,648,267 to Stanland et al. Further features may be found in the following: U.S. Pat. No. 4,989,800 to Tritch; U.S. Pat. No. 4,108,513 to Lander; U.S. Pat. No. 4,557,426 to Siciliano and U.S. Pat. No. 2,930,664 to Liebisch.
High capacity dispensers are especially desirable for commercial establishments. Three roll dispensers inherently require incomplete loading for reliable operation by way of gravity. One existing solution is the use of very high capacity, large diameter (up to 1 ft or so in diameter) single rolls; however these rolls are difficult to handle and load into the dispenser. Moreover, large roll dispensers are either without reserve rolls or are difficult to operate and re-load; a condition leading to the unavailability of tissue when needed.